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Browning and Meredith 



Some Points of Similarity 



By 
MARY WINCHESTER ABBOTT 



BOSTON 

THE POET-LORE COMPANY 

1904 



Copyright 1904 by Mary Winchester Abbott 



All rights reserved 



UBR.'VRY Cf CONGRESS 
Two Oopiss Received 

NOV 7 1904 

CLASS <t Xac, Noi 
COPY 8. 



./It 



PRINTED AT 

THE GORHAM PRESS 

BOSTON, U. S. A. 



TO 

W. L. A. 



Browning and Meredith 



Browning and Meredith 



THE aphorism, " Defend lis from our 
friends; we can defend ourselves 
from our enemies," might well have 
originated with Browning and Mere- 
dith. " No," says Browning in one of his letters, 
'' what I laughed at in my ' gentle audience ' is a 
sad trick the real admirers have of admiring in 
the wrong place — enough to make an apostle 
swear. That does make me savage." And one 
can well imagine Meredith shaking hands on this, 
with a fellow-feeling, apostolic in its fervor. An 
enemy may be amusing, even inspiring; but a 
friend, a stupid friend, is — a test of character. 
What irony in the fact that Browning and Mere- 
dith of all men, the sworn foes of sentimentalism, 
should be the victims of the sentimentalists ! It 
is easily explained : the fatal attraction of the 
strong for the weak, therein is the tragi-comedy 
of life. But to the sane admirers of an author, 
it is, nevertheless, a trial of the virtues. The 
clouds of perfumed vapor in which incense-burn- 
ing devotees have obscured their gods, make one 
gasp for the air of common sense. No wonder 



8 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

the novice, to whom the gods themselves are un- 
known, is choked and driven back. 

" Has Browning really written some poetry 
worth reading?" I was asked in all seriousness 
by a very intelligent person — otherwise intelli- 
gent, that is — and when I replied that I was 
inclined to think on the whole he had, I discovered 
my questioner's main idea of the poet to be that 
he was " ultra-religious," and a " fad with 
fashionable people." 

" Do you like Browning? " asked a Browning 
lover of a friend. 

" Yes, I really do," was the reply, " but I always 
hate to say so, so many fools like him." And when 
one hears Browning described as " just too 
lovely " and " awfully magnificent," or reads that 
Meredith's women are so wonderful, they really 
excel the creations of — Mr. Howells, one does 
feel like sinking into one's shoes in silence. 

We turn with relief to the opposite camp, and 
are refreshed by such a delicious bit of savagery 
as the paper by William Watson, called Fiction, 
Plethoric and Ancemic. This is a feast for the 
comic muse. Most critics of Browning and 
Meredith fall into one of two classes : those who 
swear by them, and those who swear at them. 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 9 

Mr. Watson belongs to the latter class, and his 
apoplectic wrath culminates on The Egoist. We 
quote : 

" ' But The Egoist/ one hears some disciples of 
Mr. Meredith asking ; * what of that unique 
masterpiece, The Egoist f ' For that is the novel 
which seems to call forth more unlimited enthusi- 
asm among the members of a certain esoteric cult 
than any other of our author's works. That is pre- 
eminently the sacred book by which the faithful 
swear." Here he quotes Stevenson at length, 
avowing that Stevenson's enthusiastic admiration 
for The Egoist makes him distrust himself. 
" Yet," he adds, " a critic can only record his own 
impressions, always taking care to test and revise 
them by such light as his own private study of the 
principles of literary art may lead him to; and, 
speaking in sober literalness, with due attention 
to the force and value of words, my impression of 
The Egoist is that it is the most entirely weari- 
some book purporting to be a novel that I ever 
toiled through in my life. At the same time, here 
is a writer of Mr. Stevenson's eminence whose 
delight in the book is manifestly real, and who, 
moreover, is able to give a lucid and telling ac- 
count of the faith that is in him concerning it. 



10 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

In the face of such evidence, an unbeHever does 
well to pause. Opinions and tastes may be ques- 
tioned ; delight in a thing cannot be argued with. 
Although Sir Willoughby Patterne, his insuffer- 
able selfishness, his colossal puppyism, his stilted 
phraseology, and his endless triflings with the 
hearts of the very unrealizable women who re- 
volve around him, are to me simply soporific in 
their monotony and inanity, it is none the less 
clear that the book has qualities which fascinate 
some superior minds, and a reader who cannot 
enjoy them will do best to recognize the fact that 
he is not one of Mr. Meredith's elect, acknowl- 
edge his own limitedness, and say no more about 
it." Whereupon he proceeds to say several more 
pages about it. " For," he continues, '' on the 
subject of literary style, even a person not pre- 
ordained from the beginning of things to 
appreciate Mr. Meredith's peculiar intellectuality 
may venture to say a word." (Evidently, when 
it comes to matters of style, Stevenson does not 
count.) Illustrations are given, and then : " No 
milder word than detestable can be applied to the 
preposterous style of which the foregoing sen- 
tences are examples, and vile as it is, it is 
surpassed in extremity of insuiferableness by the 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH ii 

— what shall one call it ? Intellectual coxcombry 
seems a blunt phrase, but is any courteous phrase 
available that will adequately describe the airs of 
superiority, the affectations of originality, the 
sham profundities, the counterfeit subtleties, the 
pseudo-oracularisms of this book ? . . . With- 
out constructive ability, without power to con- 
ceive and fashion forth realizable human 
creatures, without aptitude for natural evolution 
of incident, without the instinct for knowing 
what will keep his company awake, . . . Mr. 
Meredith can do anything better than he can tell 
a story." 

We feel that Mr. Watson's breath and vocabu- 
lary are well-nigh exhausted, and that to ad- 
equately express his feelings it would be 
necessary to resort to dashes. His article is a 
good illustration of much so-called criticism 
which consists mainly in a reiterated and round- 
about way of saying, " I don't like it, I Don't Like 
It, I DON'T LIKE IT." I have not found an 
equally savage article on Browning; perhaps be- 
cause Browning deals more with the tragic than 
the comic, and consequently does not hit the 
nerves of his unsympathetic readers as hard. 
The Egoist has been called " a drama of nerves," 



12 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

and it is just possible that the intense antipathy 
to that book shown by many, may be partly due 
to a consciousness by the nerves of a fact the 
mind refuses to accept, namely, that Willoughby, 
as Stevenson says, " is all of us." 

What a wonderful thing this criticism is ! 
How sublimely above all necessity for giving 
reasons ! But it has one advantage : it is valu- 
able training in self-reliance. One must think 
for oneself or go mad. Among the enemies of 
our authors, two positive conclusions appear. On 
the one hand, both are too intellectual. They are 
brilliant, brainy, clever; but lacking in heart, 
warmth, passion, imagination ; too philosophical 
to be good poetry or good fiction. On the other 
hand, both are too emotional. They are intense, 
passionate, melodramatic; lacking restraint, dis- 
cipline, reflection, solidity; too romantic to be 
safe guides in this wicked world. Compare the 
following : '' Browning's love poems are com- 
pletely lacking in warmth and passion." Brown- 
ing's poems " not only portray passion, which is 
interesting, but they betray it, which is odious." 
** The heart throbs of his [Meredith's] men and 
women — how lightly considered !" " If it is 
not Sturm und Drang,'' with Meredith, " it is 
spasm and gasp." 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 13 

Now, when one person swears that a bird is 
blue, and another takes oath it is brown, it is a 
fair hypothesis, is it not, that the bird may have 
both colors? And perhaps the truth at the root 
of these mutually annihilating criticisms is, that 
in both Browning and Meredith, there is at the 
same time more philosophy and more romance 
than most people know what to do with. Some 
people do not like philosophy, and some do not 
like romance, and many do not like them mixed. 
They want all sky or all earth, cloud-sentiment 
or dirt-realism. Their eyes can see but one color 
at a time ; and if they catch sight of good brown 
earth, they say the author has no ideals ; if they 
glimpse a space of blue sky, he lacks reality. But 
one thing is certain : what they do not see in an 
author is not there. To such, one is inclined to 
retort with Ben Karshook's wisdom : 

" * Friend, there is no reply ! 
Certain a soul have / — 
We may have none,' he said." 

Of what use is it to say a book lacks heart and 
brain, to one who has read it with breathless 
interest, and to whom, after years, the characters 
stand out with the distinctness of finely chiseled 



14 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

marble, and the vividness of a sunrise? Real 
criticism may exist, but in general we must 
agree with George Eliot that '* it is one of 
the afflictions of authorship to know that the 
brains which should be used in understanding a 
book are wasted in discussing the hastiest mis- 
conceptions about it." '' First catch your hare," 
says the old cook book ; and the critic might profit 
by the suggestion : " First read your book." It 
is very easy to write fluently and cleverly about 
an author if you just don't trouble yourself about 
his idea ; and most of the critics don't seem to 
have troubled one bit. One can only marvel at 
the vividness of their imagination when one does 
happen to have read the books under discussion. 
This is so preeminently true in regard to Brown- 
ing and Meredith, that the only advice to be given 
to the novice is : " Let the critics alone. Taste 
for yourself. Unflavored by incense or gall, you 
may find the fruit quite different from your ex- 
pectations." Only, of course, do not begin with 
Sordello or the first chapter of Diana. 

It might be said that the ancient Greek ideal 
was Beauty ; the mediaeval Christian, Goodness ; 
the modern scientific, Truth ; though in all 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 15 

times, the geniuses have been those who recog- 
nized the unity of these three. Browning and 
Meredith are enough the product of their times 
to start from truth. In this sense they are 
ReaHsts. At the same time they are IdeaHsts, 
because they beheve that truth is beautiful ; 
really believe it ; it is not simply a theory with 
them, but a profound conviction. " Truth 
though the heavens fall," might be placed at the 
beginning of their works ; '' Truth and the 
heavens will not fall," at the end. " You need 
never be afraid of truth," they would say. " To 
those who have the courage to face the truth, life 
is always worth living, and it is sure to bring us 
in the end to something far more beautiful than 
any fancy we may have sacrificed for it." Art is 
to them the expression of life in its heart reality ; 
truth penetrated deeply enough to find its beauty. 
To see Nature as she is and to make us see, is 
the poet's gift ; not to paint muddy shallows or 
a bowl of gold-fish, and imagine it the ocean. 
Their primal thought is that you cannot tran- 
scend Nature. Imagination is simply interpre- 
tation. P'ancies may be pretty, but they are not 
beautiful. Browning has expressed the ideal in 
the figure of an optic glass : 



i6 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

" Friend, did you need an optic glass 

Which were your choice, a lens to drape 
In ruby, emerald, chrysopras 

Each object, or reveal its shape 
Clear outlined, past escape, 

The naked very thing, — so clear 

That, when you had the chance to gaze, 

You found its inmost self appear 

Through outer seeming-truth ablaze, 

Not falsehood's fancy haze?" 

Fancy is the one, imagination the other. Which 
gives the greater beauty a very small acquaint- 
ance with science will answer. And we would 
suggest here, that a little knowledge of science 
would clear away many of the apparent diffi- 
culties in Browning. This metaphor would 
probably be cited, by one unfamiHar with a 
microscope, as an instance of his obscurity. It 
is not musical, and we have quoted it simply be- 
cause we have been unable, after repeated trials, 
to make a prose statement which as perfectly ex- 
pressed the idea. The same thought, that Nature 
is best, is brought out in his little poem Poetics. 
Meredith has the same view of art. He says 
fiction is the " summary of actual life, the within 
and without of us." " The art of the pen is to 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 17 

rouse the inward vision." " True poets have the 
native sense of the divineness of what the world 
deems gross material substance." To him and 
to Browning we may apply what he says of two 
other poets : '' They idealized upon life. The 
foundation of their types is real and in the quick, 
but they painted with spiritual strength which is 
the solid in art." They idealized on the real be- 
cause they believed that the beautiful is the deeply 
true. 

Truth first. It will lead to beauty. 
This belief is the basic principle of both Browning 
and Meredith ; and, in the following pages, we 
shall try to show how it appears over and over 
again in different forms, in their Philosophy, and 
in their Art. In their philosophy, which we will 
consider first, it might be briefly stated in the 
formula : nature is good. Nature in her purest, 
deepest sense is the source of all that is beautiful. 
And now we ask, " What do they find in Na- 
ture?" 

The answer is, "Activity and Joy: Fullness of 
Life." They are directly opposed to the passive, 
ascetic, mediaeval idea. They throb with the 
joy of action. They seem to have drunk at the 



i8 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

fountain of youth. '' Browning makes you feel 
it is impossible he should ever grow old," says a 
visitor at the Browning Italian home. " He has 
the voice and the laugh of youth," says a recent 
visitor to Meredith's home in Surrey. There is 
the same freshness in their books. With the 
complexity of the nineteenth century which pre- 
eminently they express, there is a kind of 
primitive force and simplicity of view. We feel 
they would have enjoyed living in the Odyssey. 
They are big enough to be good Pagans and good 
Christians too. They are Pagan enough to be- 
lieve in the joy of living, even to make it a test of 
right living. "A strong since joyful man," is 
their hero. They would agree with Aristotle 
that the ideas of life and happiness are " so in- 
timately combined as not to admit of separation ;" 
that '* life is energy," and happiness the perfection 
of our energies. Of all the energies they would 
emphatically add, sense as well as soul, for they 
are indivisible. Mr. Watson, in his amazing 
article, classes Meredith among the " anaemic " 
writers. To any one who has really read Mere- 
dith, this is inexpressibly droll. For Meredith's 
characters, like Browning's, are thoroughbreds. 
If there is one thing they have, it is blood; the 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 19 

blood that leaps in the veins on a morning in the 
mountains, when one " draws that breath of the 
satisfied rapture charging the whole breast with 
thankfulness;" the blood that trembles with feel- 
ing, and thrills at heroic deeds and words. Both 
writers are scientific in their belief in the vital 
connection of clear blood and clear vision. 
Health is to them almost a virtue. There is 
nothing of the fin dc siecle element about them. 
They would not be good subjects for Max 
Nordau ! 

"Oh! the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up 

to rock, 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the 

cool silver shock 
Of the plunge in the pool's living water 1 " 

Compare these lines with the description in 
Diana of a morning in the Alps, when " looking 
was living ; walking was flying," and we feel that 
Meredith might have written the lines : 

"How good is man's life the mere living! how lit to 

employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever 

in joy ! " 

The morning swim in Lord Orniont is another 
illustration of Aleredith's appreciation of the 



20 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

joy of mere living, when health and sky and sea 
and air make breathing a delight — the " strange 
pure ecstasy " of " simple being." I suppose all 
favorite writers suggest certain atmospheres to 
their readers. To me Meredith and Browning 
give the vision of a horseback ride in the early 
morning, with *' the year at the Spring," the 
dew on the grass, and the lark in the heavens. 
" Prose can paint evening," says Diana. " Poets 
are needed to sing the dawn. That is because 
prose is equal to melancholy stuff. Gladness re- 
quires the finer language." 

But, says some one, " Browning was a hopeless 
optimist because he was disgracefully healthy, 
and never had any trouble." True, people in 
perfect health are seldom really pessimistic. But 
the fact that one's view of life changes with one's 
health is rather an argument for the optimist 
than the pessimist. If we admit health to be the 
normal thing, the more perfect the health, the 
more sane would we expect the view of life to be, 
other things being equal. Men of the wonderful 
vitality of Browning and Meredith would have a 
chance to know the wealth of enjoyment possible 
in the world, as less perfectly developed animals 
would not ; and so might be expected a priori to 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 21 

be the best guides to the possibiHties of happiness.-^ 
And optimism does not consist so much in ex- 
pecting happiness for oneself as in beheving in 
its possibiHty. The only real pessimist is he who 
does not believe happiness exists. As for trouble, 
those who say Browning had none, must forget 
the one great sorrow of his life ; and if we admit 
that a simple great sorrow has not the tragic 
perplexity involved in it which shakes one's faith 
in the laws of the universe, this objection to 
Browning's philosophy cannot be urged against 
Meredith's, whose life presents a direct contrast. 
Varying as were the fortunes of these two men, 
they were both optimists in the truest sense : men, 
who with a sane frank view of life as it is, yet 
kept their vision of the ideal. Meredith's view 
of the Providence of things is not so unquestion- 
ably sure as Browning's ; perhaps because his 
closer personal experience of the tragedy of life 
made its solution seem less simple. He does not 
attempt to " justify the ways of God to man " 
with Browning's certainty. It is his " gathered 
wisdom " that the fates are within us ; that if we 
have courage. Nature is with us and we shall win 
in the end ; but he does not try to trace all the 
steps in the evolution of good from evil. He is not . 



22 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

religious in the technical sense. You will hardly 
find the word '' God " in his pages, while in 
Browning it is everywhere. Yet their ethics are 
practically the same : as one writer has ex- 
pressed it, " the simple ethics of a faith in all 
heroic enterprises." 

There is a good deal of the knight-errant about 
both these men ; a scientific knight-errant, if you 
like — a knight-errant contemporary with Dar- 
win, with an interest in evolution, and a belief in 
Nature instead of the Church — yet with all the 
romance of the best ideals of chivalry; with all 
the intensity of life of the chivalric age. 

This intensity of life seems to be irritating to 
some people. According to Professor Santa- 
yana in his Interpretations of Poetry and Reli- 
gion, the joy of action in Browning marks him 
as a *' barbarian." We quote a few sentences : 

" Life to Browning is an adventure, not a disci- 
pline." " The zest of life becomes a cosmic emo- 
tion. We lump the whole together and cry ' Hur- 
rah for the universe ! ' " " Browning's heroes 
would be right if the significance of life were to 
be measured by the intensity of the feelings it 
contained, and if intelligence were not the highest 
form of vitality." '' With an 'unconscious mix- 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 23 

ture of heathen instinct with Christian doctrine, 
Browning thinks of the other world as heaven, 
but of the Hfe to be led there as the life of nature. 
No conception could be farther from his thought 
than the essential conception of any rational phil- 
osophy, namely, that feeling is to be treated as 
raw material for thought, and that the destiny of 
emotion is to pass into objects which shall contain 
all its value while losing all its formlessness." 
The whole chapter, called The Poetry of Barbar- 
ism, from which I have quoted, is most interest- 
ing ; though to liken Browning to Whitman is, 
to put it mildly, rather droll. Most of the state- 
ments about Browning are true. Most of the con- 
clusions dravv'n from them are false. He has hit 
upon Browning's fundamental virtues, and he 
calls them vices. His own philosophy makes it 
impossible for him to interpret the poet correctly. 
He is apparently a nineteenth century ascetic, so 
cultured that he considers emotions vulgar, or at 
best a kind of necessary evil, out of which good 
may come by the discipline of transcending them ; 
through which discipline we may enter into the 
bliss of the life of contemplation. This is ascetic. 
It is mediaeval. It is Dantesque without the 
grandeur of Dante. Browning believes in emo- 



24 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

tion; that it has value in itself. If this is to be a 
" barbarian " he certainly is one, and so is Mere- 
dith, and so are all psychologists who tell you that 
the very idea of value is dependent on feeling. 
Take all feeling from a subject and you have left 
a colorless fact ; the very idea of good or evil is 
gone. 

What Professor Santayana really objects to in 
Browning is that he is not a mediaevalist ; he does 
not believe that Nature is " desperately wicked." 
To the mediaeval idealist, goodness was some- 
thing outside of and above Nature. It was at- 
tained only in some future state, by the sacrifice 
in this life of the natural feelings, and particu- 
larly of the senses. This life was of value only as 
a preparation for the future. Active joy in living 
savored too much of the earthy, the fleshly, the 
human. Browning and Meredith believe in the 
unity of earth and heaven ; of flesh and spirit ; of 
human and divine. A point they particularly 
combat, because to them it is the ground of so 
much false sentiment and false ethics, is the idea, 
fostered by much Christian theology, that the 
senses are degrading. They believe that the 
senses, like everything else, are degrading or up- 
lifting according to their use; that any other view 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 25 

leads to hypocrisy and grossness. They believe 
that only to the gross of nature are the senses 
anything but pure and good ; and that to the pure 
in heart they are wings rather than weights to the 
spirit. What they most strenuously fight is the 
unnatural separation of things in themselves 
united. What they most strongly emphasize, in 
contrast to the mediaeval idea, is the necessity of 
the harmonious working of all the energies of 
man's nature, and the wonderful value of the 
present. These two beliefs are inseparable cor- 
ollaries of the belief that Nature is good. If any 
energy of Nature is bad, then the present is bad ; 
for the most strenuous ascetic is forced to admit 
the impossibility of living an entirely intellectual 
life on earth. We cannot separate thought and 
feeling and action, the various energies of man's 
nature, and have life left, any more than we can 
separate bark and leaves and sap of a tree. But 
if all energies of Nature are good, then the present 
is just as good a time as any in which to use them. 
In truth it is the only time ; for when we reach the 
future, it has become the present. Therefore, if 
we do not live nozv, we shall never live at all. 
This is their belief. They include the mediaeval 
idea by transcending it. They believe in the 



26 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

future and in discipline ; but they believe that the 
best and only preparation for the future is the 
best and fullest use of the present ; and that the 
best discipline is that of control rather than of 
sacrifice. They believe in thought and in the life 
of the spirit ; but they believe that the feelings and 
senses are absolutely necessary to the fullest 
development of these, and are also of value in 
themselves. They believe that goodness is not 
something outside of and above Nature, but the 
zvorking out of the truth of Nature to the beauty 
and joy of life. 

This is the basis of their optimism: that all 
things are good if rightly used, and so each 
moment may bring joy. Therefore, " No regrets. 
They unman the heart we want for the morrow." 
No fears. Hope means sanity of mind. 

"A life to live — and such a life! a world 
To learn, one's lifetime in, — and such a world! 
How did the foolish ever pass for wise 
By calling life a burden, man a fly?" 

This optimism, however, is to be sharply dis- 
tinguished from the optimism of the sentimental- 
ists, who think the world is all beautiful because 
they close their eyes to everything they do not 
like. Browning and Meredith looked at what 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 27 

was before them, not over it nor under it; and 
they saw the dark side of Hfe. Sounding the 
depths, they reached the heights. 

" Only by looking low ere looking high, 
Comes penetration of the mystery" 

says Browning; and Meredith likens those who 
see only what they wish to see, to people who 
'' escape colds by wrapping in comforters instead 
of trusting to the spin of the blood." He believes 
that " muscular principles are sown only in the 
world, and on the whole, with all their errors, the 
worldly men are the truest as well as the bravest 
of men." Both authors are the deadly foes of 
sentimentalism in all its ever-changing forms. 
The lovers in The Statue and the Bust are senti- 
mentalists. So is Nevil Beauchamp. Beau- 
champ is a good illustration of the one thing 
lacking, without which the tongues of men and 
of angels avail nothing with Meredith, namely, 
STRENGTH. He has many lovable qualities, but 
in the critical point which makes the difference 
between an average man and a hero, he fails. 
The dramatic scene between Renee and Nevil in 
London is a masterpiece of subtle characteriz- 
ation, in the way it shows cowardly egotism 



28 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

masquerading as morality and self-sacrifice. 
Beauchamp does what the moral world around 
him approves, and he is man enough to be 
ashamed of himself for doing it. He knows that 
he has failed in his ordeal. That he has been 
called Meredith's " ideal hero " is a comment on 
the penetration of the critics, and is as droll as 
the assumption that Adrian Harley, in Richard 
Feverel, is " Meredith himself." Adrian is clever, 
and amusing at times. When his cousin reminds 
him that *' the boys' fate is being decided now," 
and he drawls out, " So is everybody's, my dear 
Austin," we laugh. But Adrian has lived too 
much in the " muddy shallows " of life to keep 
his wit clear ; and Meredith is quite as scornful of 
those who think they know life because they know 
its mud, as he is of the sentimentalists. The 
'' comic spirit " hovers equally over the Baronet, 
who has brought up his son on a " system " which 
is to make him perfect by keeping him from all 
knowledge of evil, and over Adrian, who opposes 
the system with the wild oats theory. And 
though the latter is useful in exposing the fallacy 
of the Baronet's position, the Baronet has the 
last word in the calm reply that he thinks " the 
third generation of wild oats would be a pretty 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 29 

thin crop." Balance of head and heart is what 
both authors demand. Their ethical theory 
might be summed up in the statement that it 
takes brains to be good, and the bad man is a 
fool. The positively bad man is not so much 
their quarry as the negatively good. In their 
eyes the latter does more harm. The man who 
will not see things as they are, whether blinded 
by egotism or convention, that man they relent- 
lessly hunt down ; that man is the sentimentalist. 

We have said that the basis of our authors* 
Philosophy is the belief that nature is good. 
Let us now see how it is worked out in their Art. 
In their Plot it takes the form of a belief in 
Moral Law ; a law as inexorable as the most ter- 
rible God ; as inexorable as the laws of physics 
and biology, for its foundation is the same. It is 
natural law carried out in all its intricacies. Fol- 
low truth, and beauty will follow you, is its 
formula. Forsake truth, and Nemesis, tragic or 
comic, will overtake you. There is absolutely no 
escape. " We are marked to get back what we 
give," says Meredith, " even from what we call 
inanimate Nature." 

A valuable thing about this psychological neme- 



30 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

sis, which we find among the Pagans, and which 
has a bracing advantage over much Christian 
theology, is that it demands intellectual clarity 
as well as moral probity. Brains and more brains 
is the only effective weapon against sentimental- 
ism. To mean well is no excuse in the realm of 
Nature's law. '' Ignorance is not innocence, but 
sin," says Browning in The Inn Album. Violate 
a law of health and you suffer, whether it was 
done in ignorance or in knowledge. The same is 
true in the moral realm, and the only ethical train- 
ing which fits one for life is that which teaches 
this truth. 

" Why are the innocent tempted to ruin, and the 
darker natures allowed to escape?" says Mere- 
dith. " Any street-boy could have told her of the 
virtue in quick wits. But her unexercised re- 
flectiveness was on the high-road of accepted 
doctrines, with their chorus of the moans of 
gossip for supernatural intervention to give us 
justice. She had not learned that those innocent, 
pushed by an excessive love of pleasure, are for 
the term lower in the scale than their wary darker 
cousins, and must come to the diviner light of 
intelligence through suffering." 

The moral value of a clear vision of life, no one 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 31 

will probably deny. From Socrates down, it has 
been admitted in various degrees. We may be 
good enough to get to the Christian heaven with- 
out brains, but we will not make much of a 
heaven on earth, and our friends may be glad to 
have us go to a place more fitted for us. In a 
world where law is paramount, you must know 
the truth, that it may make you free. From a 
scientific point of view, the moral and intellectual 
virtues have decidedly a way of getting mixed. 
The consciousness of this real unity is often 
found among simple common-sense people who 
have no idea of being scientific. " They did not 
know any better," says one. " But they ought to 
have known better," is the sturdy reply. Most of 
the tragedy of life does not come from wilful 
wrongdoing. Self-deception and stupidity are 
accountable for quite as much or more. On the 
other hand, intellectual clarity makes certain 
faults impossible. Really intellectual people are 
never prigs nor prudes. Meredith would add, 
that really witty people cannot be vile, since " the 
well of true wit is truth itself." Spiritual clarity 
and moral vileness cannot live long together ; for 
truth is one, and its law is unfailing. 

Depart from truth but by a hair's breadth, and 



32 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

the comic imps will have you with their lurking 
smile, as in The Egoist and Evan Harrington; or 
the tragic fates with their relentless frown, as in 
The Return of the Druses, and The Ring and the 
Book. The way in which a character is hunted 
down in these writers is worthy of the Greeks. 
It shows a tremendous grasp of human life. 
Some one has said that only by comparing Mere- 
dith with the Greeks can we understand him ; for 
with him, as with them, it is the main outlines 
which count first. He is strong in architectonics. 
Perfection of detail may be wanting at times. 
His work may be like " a colossal sphinx, not 
fully extricated from the desert sands " ; yet the 
strength and surety of design is there. Both he 
and Browning have a task much less simple than 
the Greeks. To have been as great artists they 
must have been greater. They portray the com- 
plexity of modern life. They voice its tmrest. 
Yet beneath it there is a great calm, born of their 
fundamental belief that truth leads to beauty, and 
that every form of untruth has its unfailing 
nemesis. 

But the nemesis is always a psychological 
nemesis. The fate is in Character rather than in 
events. We do not have an Oedipus or a Mac- 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 33 

beth cast down from temporal heights by his 
faults. The outward state of the hero often re- 
mains much the same. Yet we do not feel the 
nemesis the less, but even more. 

" You will find all you seek and perish so," 

says Michel to Paracelsus; and is not that the 
saddest of all dooms? — a doom which, though 
brought about through action, yet begins and 
ends in character. "Action in character, rather 
than character in Action," is what we find in 
both Browning and Meredith. The development 
of the soul is the one thing worth study, accord- 
ing to Browning; and Meredith declares his 
subject-matter to be the " soul wind-beaten but 
ascending." Both writers are subjective in that 
they portray thoughts and feelings, objective in 
that they portray them in others. Their method 
is different according to the different art-forms 
they use. Browning has the lyric concentration ; 
Meredith the epic breadth. Meredith works 
much in comedy; Browning chiefly in tragedy. 
Both are essentially dramatic. Their subject is 

MEN AND WOMEN. 

They are deep lovers of nature. They bring 
her to us with a vivid freshness which is en- 



34 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

chanting. They have lived with her. To treat 
this side of their work with any degree of justice 
would require a paper by itself. Yet nature is 
with them always a background for character. 
So with plot and style. They are means of de- 
veloping character. Men and Women are their 
first interest ; and men and women in some par- 
ticular situation which is their ordeal. 

And what are their men and women like? Just 
what we should expect from their philosophy. 
They have the beauty of truth ; they have 
strength. That is the first thing. Not the sham 
strength, which is selfish harshness with a fine 
name, but the true strength, which has infinite 
gentleness at the core. Their ideal hero has 
balance of brain and heart ; the complexity of 
our time with a fundamental simplicity of na- 
ture ; complexity of intellectual power and single- 
ness of devotion ; depth of thought and intensity 
of feeling. Typical characters are Caponsacchi 
and Dartrey Fenellan, knight-errants both. Loy- 
alty is the virtue par ^xceUence. Whatever else 
their heroes are, they are men you can depend 
on every time. " I like him," says the boy Cross- 
jay of Vernon Whitford, " because he is always 
the same, and your'r.e not positive about some 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 35 

people. If you look on at cricket, in comes a 
safe man for ten runs. He may get more, and 
he never gets less, — that's just my feeling 
about Mr. Whitford." Negative virtues and 
people without backbone they have small patience 
with. Wilfred Pole, the sentimentalist, is nailed 
in a sentence : " He could pledge himself to eter- 
nity, but he shrank from being bound to eleven 
o'clock on the morrow morning." 

If we could choose but two words to char- 
acterize our authors' heroes, they would be 
Strength and Purity. But the strength is never 
harsh, and the purity is never weak. It is not 
the purity of innocence, but a kind of high- 
mindedness and depth of view which makes any- 
thing low and mean impossible. It is the purity 
of fire, not of snow. It is purity in the sense that 
Meredith uses it when he says of a play, " It is 
deeply conceived, in the first place, and therefore 
it cannot be impure." 

Strength means courage and sincerity. " Her 
courage is of a kind that may knit up every other 
virtue worth having," says the Princess Ottilia 
of Janet in Harry Richmond. " So I envy and 
admire, even if I have to blame her ; for I know 
that this possession of hers would bear the ordeal 
of fire." 



36 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

" One who never turned his back, but marched breast 
forward,'"' 

is Browning's hero always. 

The test of courage is often sincerity. "A com- 
plete exposure of past meanness is the deed of 
present courage certain of its reward without 
as well as within," says Meredith ; and Browning 
expresses the same thought: 

" So absolutely good is truth, truth never hurts 
The teller, whose worst crime gets somehow grace, 
avowed." 

As the root of character is strength, so is 
purity the crown. As strength implies courage 
and sincerity, so purity implies gentleness and 
magnanimity. " It should be a spotless world 
which is thus ruthless," says Meredith in Diana 
of the Crosszuays. " But were the world im- 
peccable it would behave more generously. The 
world is ruthless, dear friends, because the world 
is hypocrite. The world cannot afford to be mag- 
nanimous, or even just." The man who is al- 
ways pulling the mote out of his brother's eye 
is pretty sure to have a beam in his own. It is 
only those who fear for themselves who must 
needs be harsh to others. The truly great and 
good are generous and kind. 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 37 

" The great man knows the power of gentleness." 

The true hero is Browning's Hercules, whose 
very voice brought strength and help : 

" The irresistible sound wholesome heart 
O' the hero, — 

This drove back, dried up sorrow at its source. 
How could it brave the happy weary laugh 
Of who had bantered sorrow ! " 

" Heracles — 
Had flung into the presence, frank and free, 
Out from the labor into the repose, 
Ere out again and over head and ears 
r the heart of labor, all for love of men; 
Making the most of the minute that the soul 
And body, strained to height a minute since, 
Might lie relaxed in joy this breathing space, 
For man's sake more than ever." 

Such are Browning's and Meredith's heroes : 
strong, great of heart, using their strength for 
love of mankind, and joyful in so doing. Here 
again we strike the note of joy as the sign of 
health in man and God : 

" Men being mortal should think mortal-like 
Since to your sullen, brow-contracting sort. 
All of them, — so I lay down law at least, — 
Life is not truly life, but misery." 



38 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

" I think this is the authentic sign and seal 
Of godship, that it ever waxes glad 
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts 
Into a rage to suffer for mankind." 

Such gladness is possible only to those who in a 
deep sense are pure in heart. They have a trans- 
parent simplicity of nature which " drinks sun- 
light," and transforms all into its own purity and 
strength. 

And what is true of their heroes is true of 
their heroines. It could hardly be otherwise from 
their point of view. But their point of view 
dififers so widely from the majority of writers, 
that their women deserve separate consideration. 
They are, indeed, one of their first claims to 
greatness. " Browning," says one writer, " had 
no use for either of the pet modern shibboleths, 
* the innate superiority of man or the innate su- 
periority of women.' " They lead to superficial 
intelligence and sentimental morality. Meredith 
agrees with the boy Richard that " girls are very 
much like boys," and with the Baronet that the 
" subsequent immense distinction is one of edu- 
cation." If balance of head and heart is a strik- 
ing characteristic of the heroes of our authors, 
it is still more noticeable in their heroines, since 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 39 

less often found — in books. It is taken for 
granted in Browning; developed at length in 
Meredith. Both writers have a deep-seated con- 
viction that women have brains, when they are 
allowed to use them; and that with brains they 
are neither angels nor devils, as is the tradition in 
much literature, but suffering human souls like 
men ; in the world, neither throned above it, nor 
trodden under foot. They believe in the " hero- 
ical feminine," in women who are " men's 
mates," in whom the " gift of strength " is 
" above ornamental whiteness." But strength 
comes only through knowledge; therefore give 
them knowledge, '' the right use of the brain." 
Brains and more brains in women, or rather the 
right to use them, is the only safeguard for so- 
ciety, according to Meredith. Cloisteral seclu- 
sion for women means sentimentalism for the 
weak, recklessness for the strong. Only through 
knowledge comes poise. Knowledge gives cour- 
age, and courage and frankness are as much a 
part of their ideal woman as tenderness and sym- 
pathy. They do not divide the virtues into mas- 
culine and feminine — the sterner ones for the 
men, the gentler for the women. 

" Get you something of our purity 
And we will of your strength" 



40 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

say the Fair Ladies in Revolt. " She is brave 
of heart," is the praise given to Sandra Belloni. 
"All her Hfe she had been frank." " I like — 
what do I like ? — his kindness," says Sandra 
of Merthyr Powys. " He has a heart, as they 
call it. Whatever it is, it's as strong as a 
cable. He is a knight of the antique," says 
Lady Charlotte. They do not seem to think that 
hearts are any more the exclusive property of 
women than brains are of men. Meredith ex- 
presses the ideal in the Tragic Comedians: " You 
meet now and then men who have the woman in 
them without being womanized ; they are the 
pick of men. And the choicest of women are 
those who yield not a feather of their womanli- 
ness for some amount of man-like strength." 
The tree and vine symbolism would not suit 
them. Their men and women are rather like 
the broadsword of Richard and the scimitar of 
Saladin, which were equally effective in battle, 
though one could cut through an iron mace and 
the other a cushion of down. 

If Thackeray had only had a conception of this, 
his women would not have been so distressingly 
good, or so fatally clever. What a character 
Meredith would have made of Beatrice Esmond ! 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 41 

I have always had a feeHng that Thackeray really 
liked brains in women, but had a theoretical ob- 
jection to them. He gets out of patience a dozen 
times with Amelia, and has to remind himself 
over and over again that she is good and there- 
fore must be lovable, in order to keep her his 
heroine at all. As a naive critic put it : " Oh, I 
like Becky best. Of course Becky was bad and 
Amelia was good. But then it always seemed to 
me Amelia just happened to be good. She didn't 
decide to be." Meredith's women and Brown- 
ing's decide to be whatever they are. " She was 
pure of will," says Meredith of one of his hero- 
ines, " fire, not ice." 

One thing more — and this is, of course, the 
sine qua non of heroines, — they are fascinating. 
We defy the most hard-headed opponent of 
brains in women not to come under the spell 
of Clara or Diana, Nesta or Sandra, Otillia or 
Renee ; Pompilia, Anael, Eulalia, the Duchess, 
or some other of the group. These women are 
intellectual, even *' brainy." They are strong of 
will, and yet — the " yet " is in deference to the 
philistine — they are delightfully feminine. Per- 
haps this little poem of ]\leredith's best sums up 
the complex charm of their personality : 



42 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

" She can be as wise as we, 

And wiser when she wishes ; 
She can knit with cunning wit, 

And dress the homely dishes. 
She can flourish staff or pen, 

And deal a wound that lingers; 
She can talk the talk of men. 

And touch with thrilling fingers. 

" Match her ye across the sea. 

Natures fond and fiery; 
Ye who zest the turtle's nest 

With the eagle's eyrie. 
Soft and loving in her soul. 

Swift and lofty soaring; 
Mixing with its dove-like dole 

Passionate adoring. 

" Such as she who'll match with me, 

In flying or pursuing; 
Subtle wiles are in her smiles 

To set the world a-wooing. 
She is steadfast as a star, 

And yet the maddest maiden ; 
She can wage a gallant war, 

And give the peace of Eden." 

This is the type, and, when we really see it, we 
do not wonder that it inspires the finest chivalry 
in men. Browning and Meredith are unlike any 
other writers we know, in that they portray at the 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 43 

same time the strongest women and the knight- 
liest men. 

This combination of strength and sweetness, 
great brain power and passionate feeUng in both 
men and women, makes their characters decidedly 
exceptional. In one sense, of course — at least 
if Aristotle be true — all great dramatic charac- 
ters are exceptional. Some trait, intensified, 
places them above or below the average. In the 
former case we have the basis for tragedy ; in 
the latter for comedy. Yet we feel that the char- 
acters of Browning and Meredith are exceptional 
in a sense that Sophocles' and Shakespeare's are 
not. Oedipus, Lear, Macbeth, serve perfectly 
as tragic heroes in their respective plots ; but 
would they be particularly interesting people to 
meet ? Personally I think not. Are they for this 
reason more typical? Perhaps. We must re- 
member that we said in Browning and Meredith 
the main interest is in character, while in the 
drama proper it is in action. Perhaps " char- 
acter in action " is more suitable for portraying 
a type of what is, and " action in character " for 
portraying the exception, or what should be, 
" characters superior but true," to quote Bourget. 
If the chief dramatic interest is in the course of 



44 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

events, it is only necessary that the characters 
be raised above the average in one particular 
point, to give a place of attack, a revolving point 
for the plot. If the interest is in the soul- 
development, the more unusual points, the more 
interesting, within limits, is the character. In 
Macbeth and Lear and Othello we have an excess 
of one emotion : ambition, vanity, jealousy. There 
is nothing exceptional about the intellect of these 
men. In Richard III and Hamlet, on the other 
hand, the excess of intellect is the trouble. In 
Paracelsus, Djabal, Anacl, Pompilia, Caponsac- 
chi, Carinthia, Diana, Redv/orth, Alvan, Sandra, 
and the rest, the interest is in the unusual combi- 
nation of intellect and feeling, struggling to de- 
velop itself. Such characters need exceptional 
circumstances to bring them out, and it is ahriost 
always true that we find them in some crucial 
position. ^^ 

As the development of the individual is the I 
chief concern of both authors, and most conven- 
tional laws are framed to subordinate the indi- 
vidual to society, their characters are often in 
rebellion against established forms. This is a 
ground of objection to some good people; the 
sort of people who will not read George Eliot's 
books because they do not approve of her char- 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 45 

acter ! One has the picture o£ a pigmy standing 
on a giant's toe, shaking its fist at him and shout- 
ing, " You bad, wicked man ! I will trample on 
you." They would describe The Ring and the 
Book as " an elaborate apology for a young wife 
who ran away from her aged husband with a 
priest ; " and they would agree with Professor 
Santayana that " the man in the gondola may well 
say he can die ; there is nothing else he can prop- 
erly do." To fit our authors to philistine ethics 
might give us trouble sometimes, but they are in 
truth profoundly moral ; as moral as James' chap- 
ter on Habit; as spiritual as truth itself. If the 
results of conventions as they are were satisfac- 
tory, there would be reason in the philistine cry, 
" Let well enough alone." But as things are, the 
question of the individual versus society is cer- 
tainly an open one. The first way to help society 
is to develop oneself. " Live for self and others," 
says the scientist. 

" To thine own self be true. 
Thou canst not then be false to any man," 

says the poet. To give we must have something 
to give ; and progress toward beauty and idealism 
comes from a greatness of spirit that dares go 



46 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

afresh to Nature for fundamental principles, in- 
stead of submitting to rules of authority simply 
because they are established. It is this that gives 
a refreshing quality to Browning and Meredith. 
To read them is like going from the hot-house 
atmosphere of a drawing-room into the pure air 
of nature. It is a '' broad plain open to boundless 
heaven," after the prison-walls of conventional- 
ity. The same principle of truth which we 
found at the base of their writing, comes out 
here : the desire to search to the foundation of 
things, and seek the real right and wrong, rather 
than accept the conventional standards which 
may or may not be right. Their ideal characters 
have the finest flower of moral courage. They 
are not afraid to do right because it looks 
wrong. There is a pitfall here. " Yes, you have 
courage," says Weyburn to Aminta, '' and that 
comes of a great heart, and therein lies the 
danger." The only safety is in a clearness of 
vision which distinguishes between what is above 
convention, and what is below it. The trouble is 
most people do not make this distinction. Per- 
haps it is safer for them not to try. If one is 
color blind, it is better to keep to black and white. 
Emerson says : '' The populace think that your 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 47 

rejection of popular standards is the rejection of 
all standards ; and the bold sensualist will use the 
name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the 
law of consciousness abides. And truly it de- 
mands something godlike in him who has cast off 
the common motives of humanity, and has ven- 
tured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be 
his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he 
may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law to 
himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as 
strong as iron necessity is to others. If anyone 
imagine that this law is lax, let him keep its 
commandment one day." No one has discrimi- 
nated more surely between the above and below 
of conventionalities than Browning and Mere- 
dith. The question of the individual and society 
may be an open one ; but from the individual 
point of view, there can be no question of the 
purity of their types. They deal with the soul 
" wind-beaten," but always ascending. 

As we have the exceptional characters in ex- 
ceptional circumstances, so we have them de- 
veloped through an exceptional Style. In their 
style, as in their philosophy, our authors' first 
aim is truth rather than beauty. They strike 
at the meaning of things, pierce to the heart, 



48 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

" spring imagination with a word." They en- 
deavor to express not only thought but the emo- 
tion which goes with thought; that which on the 
stage would be expressed by gesture; the inner 
workings of the spirit. As Meredith says of one 
of his characters, " She had not uttered word, 
she had shed meanings." The difficulty of this 
method makes success in details very uncertain; 
but when it does succeed, it gives peculiar beauty ; 
a vibrant atmosphere which expresses feeling 
as well as thought, in something the manner of 
music. One is reminded of Wagner and his be- 
lief in the relation of the two arts. Some of the 
figures of speech which have been seized for the 
sarcasm of the critics, when one understands the 
emotional state of mind they are intended to por- 
tray, are seen to be strokes of art. Taken liter- 
ally, the description of Pompilia's approach 
might be foolishness to the philistine, who did 
not appreciate the state of mind which caused it : 

"till at last 
Began a whiteness in the distance, waxed 
Whiter and whiter, near grew and more near, 
Till it was she ; then did Pompilia come ; 
The white I saw shine through her was her soul's 
Certainly, for the body was one black, 
Black from head down to foot," 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 49 

So in Meredith, " The gulf of a caress hove in 
sight Hke an enormous billow. She stooped to a 
buttercup. The wave passed by." This exactly 
expresses Clara's state of mind, and her attitude 
toward the lover's rights of the man she was 
beginning to loathe. '' She seized her languor 
like a curling snake " is a perfect expression of 
her psychological condition. And the psychology 
of smiles is in the two following descriptions: 
Pompilia's of Guido, 

"And when he took my hand and made a smile," 

and Caponsacchi's of Pompilia, 

" How when the page of the ' Summa ' preached its 

best 
Her smile kept glowing out of it." 

But the style of these writers is so closely bound 
up with their general psychological attitude, that 
before we can understand it, it is perhaps neces- 
sary to get at the heart of their thought. Like 
some people, 

" You must love them ere to you 
They will seem worthy of your love," 

and it is perhaps also true that, like some people, 
they have the faculty of almost making us love 



50 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

them for their faults. One real glimpse into 
them is such an illumination that every part is 
transfigured. John Jay Chapman says : " The 
world is so cleanly divided into people who do 
and do not care for Browning. The public which 
loves him is made up of people who have been 
through certain spiritual experiences, to which 
he is the antidote. To some he is a strong, rare, 
and precious elixir, which nothing else will re- 
place. To others, who do not need him, he is a 
boisterous and eccentric person — a Heracles in 
the house of mourning." All this is quite as true 
of Meredith, and my experience would lead me 
not to try to make anyone like these authors. 
One friend who tried Meredith told me she really 
couldn't read Choctaw; another that he liked 
some things of Browning's when he had blasted 
out a small part of their meaning. Another was 
shocked by Lord Ormont, and would read no 
further. She sent me the following clipping: 
" An American traveler asked an English book- 
seller whether he had a sixpenny Meredith. 
' Oh dear, no, miss,' the man replied, protest- 
ingly, * Meredith's altogether too choky to go 
into sixpenny, miss, and that Egoist's the choki- 
est of them all." The comment was added : 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 51 

" ' Choky ' in connection with Meredith seems an 
inspired utterance." Yet " choky " can hardly be 
appHed to the following: 

'' The tide of color has ebbed from the upper 
sky. In the West the sea of sunken fire draws 
back ; and the stars leap forth and tremble, and 
retire before the advancing moon, who slips the 
silver train of clouds from her shoulders, and, 
with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys 
heaven." Or to these : " The shadow of the 
cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon 
was climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, 
Lucy sang to him softly. She sang to him a bit 
of one of those old Gregorian chants, that, where- 
ever you may hear them, seem to build up cathe- 
dral walls about you. The young man dropped 
the sculls. The strange, solemn notes gave a 
religious tone to his love, and wafted him into 
the knightly ages and the reverential heart of 
chivalry." 

Nor are these lines particularly " obscure " or 
" rough " : 

" May's warm, slow, yellow, moonlit summer nights, 
Gone are they, but I have them in my soul." 

" She must be grown, with her blue eyes upturned 
As if life were one long and sweet surprise." 



52 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

We do not deny that obscurity is a fault of 
both these writers at times. But when we speak 
of obscurity, we must remember that even the 
elect are not free from it. I will venture to ex- 
plain any of Browning's poems (except SordeUo 
and Red Cotton Night-Cap CoinXtry) to anyone 
who will explain all of Shakespeare's sonnets 
to me. This is not saying that 'bn the whole 
Browning is not more obscure than Shakespeare. 
But neither with Browning nor Meredith is the 
obscurity an obscurity of thought. They know 
what they mean always, but language finds diffi- 
culty in expressing it at times. Life is to them 
so rich, so full of meaning, that in endeavoring to 
express it in its fullness, they sometimes burst 
the bounds of art, as c^mmqaily accepted. Their 
work is like a great, unfinished cathedral, grand 
in design, exquisitely "worked out in parts, but 
open to the outer worlds .^It has not the perfect 
cathedral air of Dante's "work. But it has a 
charm of its own, and we begin to wonder if 
there was not " method in the madness " of the 
builder. The winds bfow through it; the sun- 
light and moonlight, the blue sky and the stars 
look in, and the beauty of art is penetrated with 
the freshness of nat^ire. 






BROWNING AND MEREDITH 53 

There is one point so fundamental in our au- 
thors that we have not ventured to treat it in the 
compass of this paper ; yet it is the touchstone of 
their work — their treatment of the passion of 
Love. All the critics without exception, bitterest 
enemies and staunchest friends, unite in praising 
the love scene between Richard and Lucy, in 
Richard Fever el, as one of the most beautiful in 
all literature ; and it would not be difficult to find 
passages in Browning's love poems on which 
people could be equally unanimous. 

'* By no one," says one writer, '* has love been 
depicted with at once a profounder passion, a 
more absolute purity of touch, than by our au- 
thor. Mr. Meredith has the gift of the poets. 
There is more than one novelist of eminence who 
stiffens, as it were, into self-consciousness at the 
mere approach of love-making. He has the sense 
of intrusion, perhaps the sense of absurdity; or 
in the effort to overcome his shyness, he strains 
his effects and touches a false note. This self- 
consciousness, either of diffidence or audacity, is 
apt to communicate itself to the reader. He feels 
intrusive in his turn ; he finds an indiscretion in 
assisting at a scene where he is made to feel him- 
self an unwelcome third. Hence, the novels in 



54 BROWNING AND MEREDITH 

which the love scenes, when they are given, can 
be read with pleasure, might almost be counted 
on the fingers of one hand. But Mr. Meredith 
has the higher gift. His vision of the moment 
is too sure for self-consciousness, his conception 
of it too pure and exquisite, too removed from 
common things, to raise any emotion in the reader 
commoner than itself. He no more feels intru- 
sive than he would feel it intrusive to walk in a 
garden among flowers glowing at each other in 
the evening light." 

All this is true of both Meredith and Brown- 
ing. Love is to them the promise of immortality ; 
the deepest and purest thing in nature. All we 
have found true in their philosophy and their 
art we may see reflected in miniature, as it were, 
in their treatment of love. '* By our manner of 
loving we are known," says Meredith ; and the 
truth of the words may be seen in these writers. 

Whatever else our authors were they were 
great-hearted men, and great imaginative think- 
ers ; great artists in design if not always in de- 
tail. In their faults, as in their virtues, they are 
much alike. Their main fault is an overplus of 
Titanic energy, not perfectly moulded into art 



BROWNING AND MEREDITH 55 

form — an exceptional fault, at times suggestive 
and inspiring. Life is to them more than art. 
Truth is their first thought. Nature is their 
guide. 

In their philosophy they are lovers of the Truth 
which is Beauty. 

In their art they are Realists and Idealists. 

In their life they were Englishmen who loved 
Italy. 



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